Three Essays on Idealism

This project is part of an ongoing enquiry into the relationship between objectivity and idealism.

It can seem that the position which philosophers call idealism contradicts a certain intuitive conception of objectivity. According to that conception, the things we human beings say and think are at least capable of being true, and-in the best case-of constituting knowledge; but whether or not they are true, and so whether or not they are, because of their truth, candidates for constituting knowledge, depends on nothing else but how the world is-where the world is something which is (in some sense to be explained) independent of us. According to idealism, however, the world, upon which our thoughts depend for their truth and falsity-or, as we might put it, to which our thoughts are *answerable*-is (in some sense to be explained) not independent of us. And yet, there is a strain of thought, running through modern philosophy from at least Kant onwards, which sees idealism not as an opponent of but as a necessary condition for objectivity. This strain of thought is sometimes associated with the idea that idealism is not opposed to *realism*, but rather coincident with realism. That idea is redolent not only of a famous remark of Wittgenstein's, but also of one of Kant's aspirations for his transcendental idealism, namely, that it counts as a form of realism-what he calls 'empirical realism'.

Various philosophers have been attracted to a position describable both as a form of idealism and as a form of realism. In three recently published essays, I have sought to explore such a position by considering how it figures in the work of two prominent contemporary Anglo-American philosophers: Donald Davidson, and John McDowell. The line I take, in each of these essays, is that idealism and realism will not coincide in the way these philosophers want them to. And the explanation I offer for why this is so is that McDowell and Davidson both work with a certain naturalistic conception of who 'we' are-a conception which much contemporary Anglo-American philosophy simply takes for granted.

During my planned period of leave, I shall take this project further, in three ways.

First, I shall consider how the aforementioned position figures in the work of one more contemporary Anglo-American philosopher, namely Hilary Putnam. Putnam advances a position which he calls 'internal realism', which he intends to count both as a form of idealism, and as a form of realism. I shall argue that this intention is not fulfilled. I shall suggest that Putnam is right to think of his position as a form of idealism, but wrong to think of it as a form of realism. And this is because it is rightly thought of as a form of transcendental idealism, a position which-in my view-is not rightly thought of as a form of realism at all.

Secondly, I shall broaden the focus which the project has taken so far, by exploring the origins of the aforementioned position in the work of Kant. Centrally, I shall argue for a reading of transcendental idealism according to which it is not a form of realism-not because it sees the world, to which our thoughts are answerable, as somehow 'constructed' by the activity of our minds, but because it demarcates the world, to which our thoughts answer, from the truly real reality, to which our thoughts are incapable of answering.

Thirdly, I shall develop an argument for the claim that, in fact, transcendental idealism is required in order to sustain the intuitive conception of objectivity. This will build on a famous argument of John McDowell's, to the effect that a form of idealism is needed to sustain this conception. Contrary to what McDowell claims, however, I shall suggest that the form of idealism in question is transcendental idealism, rather than the different form McDowell aims to defend.

The proposed Fellowship project is centrally concerned with the following questions: whether sustaining a certain intuitive conception of objectivity requires endorsing a form of idealism; whether there is a position which can be truly described both as a form of idealism and as a form of realism; and how best to understand Kant's transcendental idealism. It can be hard to see how reflection on such highly abstract matters can have much measurable impact on life outside the academy. At the very least it can seem that identifying-at the time of the application-potential non-academic beneficiaries of the research is not a straightforward matter.

However, perhaps even a project along these lines can have some identifiable impact on constituencies from outside the academy-centrally, on members of the public with a broad interest in philosophical issues. For it is quite common for members of the public with a general interest in philosophy to be interested in exactly the kind of grand philosophical themes which are of concern to this project.

It is possible to give a concrete example of this. One feature of recent non-academic intellectual life was the so-called 'science wars', in which avowed 'realists' pitted themselves against 'relativists', or 'social constructivists'. Dispatches from these 'wars' appeared not only in broadly academic outlets such as the *Times Literary Supplement* and *The New York Review of Books*, but in popular venues such as *The New York Times* and *The Guardian.* This led to some notable spats; e.g., on *The New York Times*' Op-Ed pages, between the critic Stanley Fish, and the physicist Alan Sokal. One striking feature of these spats, from a philosopher's point of view, was that whereas the 'realists' tended to present the 'relativists' as denying various truisms about objectivity, the 'relativists' claimed that they were not denying these truisms, but rather understanding objectivity in a less 'absolutist', more 'humanistic' way. However, they often did seem to be denying these very truisms.

One question raised by this is whether it is possible to express a view which takes seriously and does justice to some of the aspirations of those who seek a less 'absolutist', more 'humanist' understanding of truth, but without denying the truisms about objectivity which the 'realists' espouse. Now that the dust has settled on the 'science wars', there might be space for a popular article which suggests that Kant's transcendental idealism, understood along the lines I recommend, is just such a view. The point of this article would not be to fire another salvo from the 'realist' or the 'relativist' side of the 'wars', but rather to try to understand the motivations of the respective 'warriors', and to seek to bring clarity, and even harmony, to what has been a rather fractious dispute. This, it seems to me, is one of the things which philosophy is particularly well-placed to do: to step back from the fray, and to try, not to take a stand in a debate, but to understand what is at stake in it, and to suggest that there are possibilities which have been neglected but which, when they are brought into the open, allow the debate to be seen in a rather different light. These debates often do seem to be confined within the ambit of the academy. But this is an example of a debate which has engaged a wider constituency.

Towards the end of the Fellowship period, I shall write just such an article, and to submit it to a popular magazine such as *Philosophy Now*, or *The Philosopher's Magazine*. These magazines are often the first port of call for members of the public with a broad interest in philosophy. As the 'science wars' have shown, and as the letters pages of these magazines often attest, there is a non-academic constituency that might benefit from an article which outlines some of th